A pragmatic European approach to open standards (a must-read)

Tony Austin
Sunday, 09 November 2008 12:37

Opinion and Analysis

The report's authors go on to discuss the meaning of  the term open standards: "It goes beyond the traditional definitions of standards in so far as it looks at openness from two angles: (1) the standards development process and (2) the availability of the standard for implementation and use. Little controversy exists over the standards development aspect."

"Open standards are essential and healthy for the software ecosystem," they say. "Thus, the key questions in relation to openness and open standards are: (1) What are the requirements on open standards in specific domains or for certain purposes? (2) How can all of us contribute to getting along the path towards openness?"

They give examples of several well-Known open standards (some of which started off as proprietary product implementations.

They mention how PDF (Portable Document Format) began as a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange, and that PDF is now an open standard (ISO 32000-1:2008).

 "Anyone may implement the standard and create applications that read and write PDF files. Adobe holds patents to PDF, but licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its PDF specification."

"The impact of the above is huge," they point out. "Most governments across the globe are actively using PDF documents in their workflow and for archiving. Now that PDF is a fully open standard, multiple vendors can support the format, and governments avoid lock-in."

Then they go on: "The Open Document Format (ODF) is suitable for office documents, including text documents, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents like drawings or presentations, but is not restricted to these kinds of documents."

"The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) developed this new open standard based upon the XML-based file format originally created by OpenOffice.org. OASIS submitted ODF to the Joint Technical Committee (JTC-1) of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). In May 2006, it was approved unanimously as an ISO and IEC standard (ISO/IEC 26300:2006)."

PLEASE READ ON...